It is easy to go straight into the analysis of how we inherit systems and how the rules that people function within those systems could be up to a point manipulated and imposed. I see Edwin’s analysis of the play as an interesting one as it deploys these ideas of inherits virtue and justice and presents them perhaps as performances. His analysis of how characters function in the novel is very interesting in pointing out that inheritance of pretending here is not related to artistic expression (Corinne) but to a spoiled bored temperament that needs to be acted out. Edwards calls it childish. Even though acting is a vehicle that allows them to become closer to their objects of infatuation, the acting itself is treated in the novel as serious as a polemic convention.
“Mansfield Park, with its clashes of will and consciousness,
is in fact a world of children, most of them struggling not to grow up.
Henry has, preeminently, the child's fascination with the idea of
changing his identity, as his delight in acting suggests. If Edmund
can make him yearn for the clerical life, William Price, for a
moment, arouses his hitherto unrecognized love of seafaring and
honest toil” (pp. 236-237).
William, like Fanny holds an adult role in the novel. We are not even talking about creative inheritance; there is simply a refusal to grow up by these adults. Their responsibilities are taken care of. Fanny appears so much more interesting because her upbringing and background has shows her the struggles of real children. When she visits home we get to see her mother treating her children with love and compassion as opposed to Lady Bertram is also like a child and so her children have adapted to the same lazy way of life.
It is easy to go straight into the analysis of how we inherit systems and how the rules that people function within those systems could be up to a point manipulated and imposed. I see Edwin’s analysis of the play as an interesting one as it deploys these ideas of inherits virtue and justice and presents them perhaps as performances. His analysis of how characters function in the novel is very interesting in pointing out that inheritance of pretending here is not related to artistic expression (Corinne) but to a spoiled bored temperament that needs to be acted out. Edwards calls it childish. Even though acting is a vehicle that allows them to become closer to their objects of infatuation, the acting itself is treated in the novel as serious as a polemic convention.
“Mansfield Park, with its clashes of will and consciousness,
is in fact a world of children, most of them struggling not to grow up.
Henry has, preeminently, the child's fascination with the idea of
changing his identity, as his delight in acting suggests. If Edmund
can make him yearn for the clerical life, William Price, for a
moment, arouses his hitherto unrecognized love of seafaring and
honest toil” (pp. 236-237).
William, like Fanny holds an adult role in the novel. We are not even talking about creative inheritance; there is simply a refusal to grow up by these adults. Their responsibilities are taken care of. Fanny appears so much more interesting because her upbringing and background has shows her the struggles of real children. When she visits home we get to see her mother treating her children with love and compassion as opposed to Lady Bertram is also like a child and so her children have adapted to the same lazy way of life.